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Timer to record time spent on tasks

whall says:

I've seen a couple of ideas posted here about people entering in "estimated time" vs "actual time" and while I'm sure that might be helpful to some, I'd instead like an easier way to start and stop a timer associated with a task.

The implementation via web or iPhone or any other client would be the same -- click a button to start the timer. Until you click the button to stop the timer, the timer is going, adding time spent on that task. Of course, we'd want to be able to correct the total time spent.

The purpose of this is to help people gauge what they DO spend their time on. You could also have a little sidebar that let you put in a quick "I spent 30 mins reading blogs" or "I spent 2 hours watching TV" in pre-made categories to further get ahold of what we actually spend time on.

Another good option would be a daily report showing time spent vs time budgeted, or maybe alerts of trends, goals, etc.

Posted at 8:42pm on March 7, 2011

isaac4given says:

Right now I use one app (MapleXP) for time tracking, and spend some time trying to synchronize my time tracking app with RTM. So, I agree that it would be great if RTM could integrate these features.

Posted 4 years ago

srmeyers2 says:

This would be great and very simple to implement with a the simple start/stop (and correctable) interface. Today, we work on lots of different tasks at different times and new tasks are continually fed to us. I use a timer (via a big Excel spreadsheet) that I use to actually show me WHERE I spend my time. This helps me become more productive and is part of a growing manage-what-you-measure movement around "Self Quantification" (www.quantifiedself.com).

The other "use case" would be to create billing data (i.e. how many hours did I spend on these tasks for these lists/projects at $X/hour billable rate. However, I'm more concerned with simple quantification metrics.

Posted 4 years ago

aiaebay says:

Yes--would love a simple timer to run as I'm working on a task. The estimated time feature is fairly meaningless without something to check it against.

Posted 2 years ago

swartzy says:

I agree. If I could have a timer, i could keep track of how much time it took me to do the task, so later when I bill my hours (I'm a freelancer), its all in one place.